BY STEWART SLATER
“To be is to be perceived,” said George Berkeley and, had he been right, the village would not, at that time, have existed. Nestled in the South of France, in summer it was full of tourists, some seeking warmth, relaxation and pretty pictures for Instagram, others, the more artistically inclined, the light itself, sure, if only they could capture it, to elevate their daubings to masterpieces. In early March, it was empty. The flowers had yet to bloom, the restaurants had yet to open and the grey light had a quality of nothing more than claustrophobia lending itself to Rothko perhaps, but not to Van Gogh. The future might be warm and sunny, but the present was soggy, rainy day following soggy, rainy day.
I was not there because I wanted to be – nobody would. Nor, like the villagers who remained, because I had to be. In truth, I had nowhere better to be. My life was, as they say in those parts, in la merde. Money had come and gone. Relationships had come and gone. Success hadn’t gone because it had never come. Youthful dreams had become middle-age cliché – the writer who can’t write. I had a book contract, but sadly not the book to go with it, a fact of which my publisher was increasingly and disconcertingly volubly aware. Ambitions to say something significant, something that would last had been downgraded to a need just to say anything -ideally something that would sell, though. Words, however, came there none.
Mark was no-one’s idea of a guardian angel. The wings wouldn’t have fitted under his well-tailored suit, and he had spent long enough in the City that the old thing about the eye of the needle definitely applied. Whether he spotted an opportunity for charity to salve his rapacious soul, or he was just helping out an old friend, I do not know but one night, after enough drinks to fit my failing writer brand but not enough to go the full Hemingway, he came up with an answer.
What I needed, he decided, was to get away for a bit. No distractions, no memories, just a new environment and peace. He had a little farmhouse in France which was just the ticket. He wasn’t using it, so I should. A lady from the village came in once a week to clean, so I could just relax and concentrate. It was the sort of place which gave birth to Booker winners. Pride and innate Englishness led me to resist, but it was no good. Five minutes of the type of bluster which leads unsuspecting investors to decisions they will come to regret won me over. Perhaps, deep down, I wanted to be won over. A week later, the door to my London flat was locked, and that to Mark’s farmhouse had been opened.
He had, it turned out, been right. He was annoying that way. After a few days, I hadn’t written anything but I had started to think that I could write something. Every now and then, chinks of light pierced the gloom of my internal atmosphere, if not the actual atmosphere which seemed to be on a mission to display all the shades of grey perceptible to the human eye. The rain hadn’t stopped, but my despair had. Slightly. Perhaps it was just that I could not get a phone signal.
Life that first week soon found its rhythm. A morning walk round the farm (mud seemed to be the main crop) followed by sketching out some ideas. A walk to the village’s only open café for lunch followed by a walk back and a siesta. A few more ideas sketched and it was time for dinner, the fridge helpfully filled by Mark’s cleaner. A bottle from the cheaper shelves of his cellar and it was time for bed, Morpheus arriving to the never-ending fanfare of rain-drops.
But if I had thought I would be alone, it turned out that I was wrong. Every lunch-time, the café had another customer. A hard man to place – a young sixty or an old forty, he could have been either. What he was not was French – his clothes were not those of a French villager, nor was his French. Better than my GCSE certainly but conveyed in the unmistakable tones of one who still held the corner of England William the Conqueror had granted his ancestors. Every day, he came in, every day he ate his lunch and every day he left. An unforced but never ending ritual.
At first mildly miffed – a few days was all it had taken to consider the village my village – curiosity soon took over. A sniff of opportunity too – I knew why I was there, why was he? Was there a story in it, a way of backing myself out of my literary cul-de-sac? Perhaps there was a touch of loneliness too. GCSE French might get you lunch, but it won’t get you a conversation and, in any case, the waitress gave every impression of holding this particular rosbif personally responsible for Waterloo. Trafalgar and Blenheim too, no doubt. Charm only came out with the sun and of that there was still no sight.
We have already established that pride and innate Englishness are two of my numerous flaws and we have already established that desperation can overcome them so the next day, steak hache washed down by a glass of distinctly agricultural red, I walked over to the table and offered my hand.
If the eyes were amused, the tone was welcoming and I was bidden to sit down. A drink was offered and, the obligatory show of reluctance having been performed, accepted.
“What,” he asked, “brings you to this most profonde corner of France?” The voice was playful, light, the voice of a man who could take amusement from anything.
“I’m a writer actually. Got a bit of the old writer’s block so a friend lent me his house. Thought it would do me good.”
“Well, it worked for Colin Firth.” He leaned forward slightly. “Though I should tell you that Mme Dupont who cleans your house is spoken for before you get too Love, Actually… Is it working? Are the creative juices flowing yet?”
“I wouldn’t go that far. Sometimes I think they are but then they dry up again.”
“Well, it will come when it is ready. Things usually do.”
The drinks arrived, my companion’s delivered with notably greater grace than my own.
“Tell that to my publisher.”
“Ahh, it’s like that is it? The advance arrived somewhat before inspiration did.”
“Fraid so. I’m staring down the barrel of a three-month essay crisis, but a publisher with a lawyer is a bit more threatening than a tutor with the hump.”
Some people have a knack for getting others to open up, and those who do should go into the police or the priesthood. I have no idea if my companion had been in either but if he hadn’t he was a true loss for the following minutes saw me unburden myself in a way both deeply unbecoming and entirely natural, my failings and failures laid out before this complete stranger. There was no sign of disdain or disgust at each new entry in my catalogue of woes, just a steady, detached patience, a space I felt compelled to fill.
“Sorry, that must have been incredibly dull. There’s nothing less interesting that someone talking about themself.”
“Not at all.” The eyes were still smiling and two fingers were raised, my companion every bit as fluent in the international language of drinkers as he was in French.
“I knew a man like you once.”
“Really?”
“Hmm.” He nodded. “He went through a bad patch too. Everything he tried just made things worse.”
“That’s a feeling I can relate to. What did he do?”
“He had an insight one day. He was doing something he didn’t want to do in a place he didn’t want to be and he realised that, despite that, he was still happy. And that surprised him. He thought he was a normal sort of chap who wanted the normal sort of things. Here he was, having lost them all, and he was just as happy as he had been when he had them.”
“So, what did he do? Drop out?”
“No, quite the opposite. His little flash of insight made him realise just how little he knew himself. And he realised that he was the only person who ever could understand himself. So, he decided to try.”
“What does that mean exactly?”
“He started watching himself. He came to understand that whenever anything happened, he reacted to it, and that reaction told him something about himself. If he dropped out, he realised, he would never learn much. He had to lean in, to keep finding new bits of himself to discover.”
“Did it work?”
“Eventually.” A wry smile. “It took a while. Years in fact. Changing these things does. It was like moving a rock, he said. There were huge stretches where it just didn’t budge, then there was a slight rocking, then it finally started to move and after that, well, it didn’t stop.”
“So where did he end up?”
“That’s the thing about rocks. You can start them rolling, but they’ll follow their own path. He got to somewhere he hadn’t intended to go, somewhere he didn’t even know he could go.”
“Is this some sort of Enlightenment story? Is he one with the cosmos?” There is a limit to how much agricultural red I should consume, and it was coming dangerously close.
Another smile. Still gentle. “No, he’s the last person you’ll see in a loincloth. Of the world certainly but only in it when he chooses. Free. Everything teaches him something and that’s all he needs so he just lets it flow. It’s amazing what you see when you stop looking and start watching. There’s a whole world in making a cup of tea if you want there to be. The world seems to start giving as soon as you stop wanting. That, of course, is the hard bit. The bit that takes time.”
It is not, I admit, necessarily praise-worthy, but an idea was forming. I had a book to write and here, possibly, was a book to be written. The self-help pound is a big pound. Sure, it wasn’t the book I had signed up to write, but it could certainly be a book that sold.
“Could I meet him, perhaps? Your friend, I mean. He sounds fascinating.”
Another smile. A glance at the wrist. The watch elegant, of course. “I’m afraid not. I don’t know where he is. It’s been a while. Now, I’m afraid I really must be going.”
Had I pushed it too far, caused offence? The smile was still there, but it had been there all the time. Perhaps he just had a smiley face.
Maybe the rain was heavier that night. Maybe my conscience was as cloudy as the skies above me. Whatever the reason, sleep came only fitfully. Something about the man had drawn me to him, fear I might have caused upset giving a pang I didn’t expect and couldn’t shake. And there was a hope that I could bring him round. He obviously knew this other man well. They must have kept in touch. I would see him at the café and try again.
The morning passed as those mornings did. Mud and dud ideas. Time went slowly, filled with fantasies of authorial success. Who knows, maybe there was a movie in the story, a chance to go from having nothing to having everything. Eventually it was time for lunch.
The café was empty. Perhaps he was late. The food was every bit as mediocre, the wine every bit as agricultural as they had been every other day. The hands on the clock seemed to move like a finger wagging in admonishment. I must have insulted him, scared him off. Or perhaps he was ill. Maybe there was some event going on which had escaped my attention.
Closing time approached. Had things been different, had I been different, it might have stayed open. But as things were, as I was, closing time meant closing time. There was only one thing for it.
“Madame! Ou est-il?”
“Qui?” a voice honed by Gauloises and disdain.
“L’Anglais? Le gentilhomme qui est toujours a la table la.”
“L’Anglais? Quel Anglais? You’re the only Englishman in the village.”
Stewart Slater works in Finance. He invites you to join him at his website.